Simplified entity lifecycle management

ABSTRACT

The technology disclosed offers a declarative framework that implements a machine for multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. The declarative framework is usable over and over for a broad range of applications because it provides a simple rule-based authoring tool that can be used for specifying different elements and components of a complex state machine, including state definitions, state transition triggers, state transition conditions and state transition actions. Once defined, the state machine is automatically generated and implemented based on the declarative input provided by a non-technical user.

PRIORITY APPLICATIONS

This application is related to and claims the benefit of two U.S. Provisional patent applications filed on Sep. 17, 2015. The two priority provisional applications are 62/220,132, “SIMPLIFIED ENTITY LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT” (Atty. Docket No. SALE 1130-2/1644PROV2); and 62/220,137, “SIMPLIFIED ENTITY ENGAGEMENT AUTOMATION” (Atty. Docket No. SALE 1131-2/1645PROV2), and is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/936,141. The priority provisional applications and parent application are hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is related to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/219,127, entitled, “HANDLING MULTIPLE TASK SEQUENCES IN A STREAM PROCESSING FRAMEWORK,” filed on Sep. 16, 2015 (Atty. Docket No. SALE 1133-1/1647PROV). The provisional application is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

This application is related to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/219,135, entitled, “PROVIDING STRONG ORDERING IN MULTI-STAGE STREAMING PROCESSING,” filed on Sep. 16, 2015 (Atty. Docket No. SALE 1134-1/1648PROV). The provisional application is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

This application is related to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/220,811, entitled “SUB-SECOND RESPONSES TO COMPLEX ANALYTICAL QUERIES USING COMBINATION OF BATCH AND STREAM PROCESSING”, filed on Sep. 18, 2015 (Atty. Docket No. SALE 1138-1/1652PROV). The related application is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes.

FIELD OF THE TECHNOLOGY DISCLOSED

The technology disclosed relates generally to a programming model for Internet of Things (IoT), and in particular to providing a straightforward, intuitive, scalable and easily codable workflow for IoT.

BACKGROUND

The subject matter discussed in this section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in this section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in this section or associated with the subject matter provided as background should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in this section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also correspond to implementations of the claimed technology.

The technology disclosed offers a declarative framework that implements a state machine for multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. The declarative framework is usable over and over for a broad range of applications because it provides a simple rule-based authoring tool that can be used for specifying different elements and components of a complex state machine, including state definitions, state transition triggers, state transition conditions and state transition actions. Once defined, the state machine is automatically generated and implemented based on the declarative input provided by a non-technical user.

In today's world, we are dealing with huge data volumes, popularly referred to as “Big Data”. Web applications that serve and manage millions of Internet users, such as Facebook™, Instagram™, Twitter™, banking websites, or even online retail shops, such as Amazon.com™ or eBay™ are faced with the challenge of ingesting high volumes of data as fast as possible so that the end users can be provided with a real-time experience.

Another major contributor to Big Data is a concept and paradigm called “Internet of Things” (IoT). IoT is about a pervasive presence in the environment of a variety of things/objects that through wireless and wired connections are able to interact with each other and cooperate with other things/objects to create new applications/services. These applications/services are in areas likes smart cities (regions), smart car and mobility, smart home and assisted living, smart industries, public safety, energy and environmental protection, agriculture and tourism.

Currently, there is a need to make such IoT applications/services more accessible to non-experts. Till now, non-experts who have highly valuable non-technical domain knowledge have cheered from the sidelines of the IoT ecosystem because of the IoT ecosystem's reliance on tech-heavy products that require substantial programming experience. Thus, it has become imperative to increase the non-experts' ability to independently combine and harness big data computing and analytics without reliance on expensive technical consultants.

Therefore, an opportunity arises to provide systems and methods that use simple and easily codable declarative language based solutions to execute big data computing and analytics tasks. Increased revenue, higher user retention, improved user engagement, and experience may result.

SUMMARY

A simplified summary is provided herein to help enable a basic or general understanding of various aspects of exemplary, non-limiting implementations that follow in the more detailed description and the accompanying drawings. This summary is not intended, however, as an extensive or exhaustive overview. Instead, the sole purpose of this summary is to present some concepts related to some exemplary non-limiting implementations in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description of the various implementations that follow.

To address these technical challenges, the technology disclosed offers a declarative framework that implements a state machine for multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. The declarative framework is usable over and over for a broad range of applications because it provides a simple rule-based authoring tool that can be used for specifying different elements and components of a complex state machine, including state definitions, state transition triggers, state transition conditions and state transition actions. Once defined, the state machine is automatically generated and implemented based on the declarative input provided by a non-technical user.

Other aspects and advantages of the technology disclosed can be seen on review of the drawings, the detailed description and the claims, which follow.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the drawings, like reference characters generally refer to like parts throughout the different views. Also, the drawings are not necessarily to scale, with an emphasis instead generally being placed upon illustrating the principles of the technology disclosed. In the following description, various implementations of the technology disclosed are described with reference to the following drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 depicts an exemplary IoT platform.

FIG. 2 illustrates a stream processing framework used by an IoT platform similar to the example IoT platform example shown in FIG. 1, according to one implementation of the technology disclosed.

FIG. 3 is one implementation of a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity.

FIG. 4A, FIG. 4B and FIG. 4C show date entry columnar examples for accepting declarative inputs to create the state machine illustrated in FIG. 3.

FIG. 5 shows a server-side implementation of a flowchart of simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow.

FIG. 6 depicts a client-side implementation of a representative method of simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow.

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an exemplary multi-tenant system suitable for integration with the IoT platform of FIG. 1, in accordance with one or more implementations of the technology disclosed.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following detailed description is made with reference to the figures. Sample implementations are described to illustrate the technology disclosed, not to limit its scope, which is defined by the claims. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize a variety of equivalent variations on the description that follows.

The discussion is organized as follows. First, an explanation of terminology that will be used throughout the discussion is provided, followed by an introduction describing some of the technical problems addressed and technical solutions offered by various implementations. Then, a high-level description of some implementations will be discussed at an architectural level. Also, a state machine implementing an entity management workflow is described. Further, some user interface views used by some implementations will be presented. Next, more focused actions for implementing the system, together with data entry models, transitive triggers and condition definitions are discussed. Lastly, some particular implementations are discussed.

Terminology

Entity: An entity is defined as a thing or object that interacts and communicates with other things or objects and with the environment by exchanging data and information sensed about the environment while reacting to real/physical world events, to provide services for information transfer, analytics, applications and communications. Examples of entities include humans, online social networks, wireless/wired sensors, smart phones, smart watches, applications, PCs, laptops, tablets, IP telephones, servers, application servers, cameras, scanners, printers, near-field communication devices like RFID tags and RFID readers, vehicles, biomedical equipment, and others. In some implementations, the singular “entity” and the plural “entities” are used interchangeably in this application for clarity. For this application, in some implementations, “entities” are “data sources”, “users”, and other actors.

Internet of Things Platform: The “Internet of Things (IoT) platform” disclosed herein is defined as an integrated environment that collects and processes a high volume of data from a plurality of entities in real-time or near real-time, often with low latency. In some instances, processing logic can be applied to the data to generate real-time or near real-time analytics. In one implementation, an IoT platform is defined as an integrated framework that utilizes computation over a combination of stream mode and batch mode to periodically generate aggregates using batch and offline analytics and substitute results from real-time data streams to generate real-time analytics by performing computational tasks like data mining, machine learning, statistical processing, predictive analytics, time series analysis, rule based processing, complex event processing, pattern detection, correlation and more. In one implementation, the IoT platform offers a high throughput of the order of processing one million tuples per second per node. In another implementation, the IoT platform offers insights to end-users in the form of rich visualization, using GUI and/or API based tools like standard graphs, bars, charts and overlaid infographics.

Near Real-Time Data Stream: A near real-time (NRT) data stream is defined as a collection of events that are registered as they are generated by an entity. In one implementation, an NRT data stream is an unbounded sequence of data tuples. In some implementations, a NRT data stream has an emission rate of one million events or tuples per second.

Event: An event is any identifiable unit of data that conveys information about an occurrence. In one implementation, an event can also provide information concerning an entity. An event can have three aspects: a timestamp indicating when the event occurred; a set of dimensions indicating various attributes about the event; and a set of metrics related to the event. Events can be user-generated events such as keystrokes and mouse clicks, among a wide variety of other possibilities. System-generated events include statistics (e.g. latency/number of bytes, etc.), program loading and errors, also among a wide variety of other possibilities. In one implementation, events include network flow variables, device information, user and group information, information on an application (e.g., resource condition, variables and custom triggered events). An event typically represents some message, token, count, pattern, value, or marker that can be recognized within a NRT data stream, such as network traffic, specific error conditions or signals, thresholds crossed, counts accumulated, and so on. A typical user interaction with an application like Pardot™ processes a sequence of events that occur in the context of a session. The main events of note are (a) login—provide user credentials to a hosted service to authenticate the user; (b) application transactions—execute a set of application level transactions, e.g. add leads or define new operations; and (c) log-out—this event terminates the session with the server. In some implementations, deep packet inspection logic tracks raw event data to identify events, and stores them in an event repository. This application, in some implementations, interchangeably refers to “events” as “data”, and vice-versa. Other examples of events generated by or about various entities include telemetry from a wearable sensor, data from a smart watch, data and/or metadata generated by a user using a feature of an application (such as Microsoft Word™), trip or journey data generated from a GPS used by a driver starting or completing a trip, data generated by a vehicle reporting speed or location information, data generated by a medical device reporting a sensor reading, etc.

Pipeline: A pipeline is defined as a series of grouped interrelated events. In one implementation, the grouping is on a tuple-by-type basis. In another implementation, the grouping is on batch-by-batch basis.

Online Social Network: An “online social network” is defined as any combination of software, protocols and/or hardware configured to allow a community of users or individuals and/or other entities to share information, resources and the like via a computer network (such as the Internet). An online social network uses a platform like a website, blog or forum to foster interaction, engagement and information sharing. Some examples of an online social network include Facebook™, Twitter™, YouTube™, Flickr™, Picasa™, Digg™, RSS™, Biogs™, Reddit™, Linkedin™, Wikipedia™, Pinterest™, Google Plus+™, MySpace™, Bitly™ and the like. This application, in some implementations, interchangeably refers to “online social network” as “social network”, “social media site”, “social networking service”, “social media source” and “social networking entity”, andvice-versa.

Application Programming Interface: An “application programming interface (API)” is defined as a packaged collection of code libraries, methods and fields that belong to a set of classes, including its interface types. The API defines the way that developers and programmers can use the classes for their own software development, just by importing the relevant classes and writing statements that instantiate the classes and call their methods and fields. In another implementation, an API is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other. An API can include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes and variables. Basically, an API provides an interface for developers and programmers to access the underlying platform capabilities and features of online social networks. For example, Twitter's Search API involves polling Twitter's data through a search or username. Twitter's Search API gives developers and programmers access to data set that already exists from tweets which have occurred. Through the Search API, developers and programmers request tweets that match search criteria. The criteria can be keywords, usernames, locations, named places, etc. In another example, Twitter's Streaming API is a push of data as tweets are posted in near real-time. With Twitter's Streaming API, developers and programmers register a set of criteria (e.g., keywords, usernames, locations, named places, etc.) and as tweets match the criteria, they are pushed directly to the developers and programmers. In yet another example, Twitter Firehose pushes data to developers and programmers in near real-time and guarantees delivery of all the tweets that match the set criteria.

Application: An application refers to a network hosted service accessed via a uniform resource locator (URL). Examples include software as a service (SaaS) offerings, platform as a service (PaaS) offerings and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings, as well as internal enterprise applications. Examples of applications include Salesforcel Platform™, Sales Cloud™, Data.com™, Service Cloud™ Desk.com™, Marketing Cloud™, Pardot™ Wave Analytics™, Box.net™, Dropbox™, Google Apps™, Amazon AWS™, Microsoft Office 365™, Workday™, Oracle on Demand™, Taleo™, Yammer™ and Concur™. In one implementation, an application offers insights to end-users in the form of rich visualization, using GUI and/or API based tools like standard graphs, bars, charts and overlaid infographics.

Entity Experience Operation: An “entity experience operation” is defined as an orchestrated effort, usually on behalf of an experience operator (e.g. company, organization), to enable effective user management and resource provisioning, application life cycle management, user engagement, traffic monitoring, activity tracking, provisioning for application modeling, etc.

Identification: As used herein, the “identification” of an item of information does not necessarily require the direct specification of that item of information. Information can be “identified” in a field by simply referring to the actual information through one or more layers of indirection, or by identifying one or more items of different information which are together sufficient to determine the actual item of information. In addition, the term “specify” is used herein to mean the same as “identify.

Physical Thread: Once deployed, a container operates over of a set of so-called “physical threads”. A physical thread utilizes a processor core of a worker node and runs inside a set of code processes (e.g., Java processes) that are distributed over the worker node, no more than one physical thread per core. A physical thread also carries out the logic of a set of tasks/jobs for different elements and components (e.g., emitters and transformers) of a container.

Long Tail Task Sequence: A “long tail task sequence” is a task sequence that consumes dedicated computing resources which, when properly sized for the beginning of the task sequence, are excessive as the task sequence tails off. An example of a long tail task sequence is giving out of fantasy football game tokens during Super Bowl by gaming company. Once the demand for fantasy football tapers after the Super Bowl, the use of the game tokens also decreases. As a result, the number of game token redemption requests electronically received as events also decreases. However, the gaming company still honors the unused tokens that are redeemed slowly over a long period after the Super Bowl. This extended lull characterizes a long tail task sequence because it does not require as much computation resources as the surge during the Super Bowl and thus can be operated on fewer computational resources than initially allotted.

Emitter: Data enters a container through a so-called “emitter”. Emitters are event tuple sources for a container and are responsible for getting the event tuples into the container. In one implementation, emitters pull event tuples from input queues. In some implementations, emitters include user-specified conversion functions, such that they consume byte strings from an input queue and forward them as tuples to downstream transformers. An emitter retrieves one or more tasks/jobs that are executed by one or more physical threads of a worker node.

Transformers: A transformer is a computation unit of a container that processes the incoming event tuples in the container and passes them to the next set of transformers downstream in the container. A transformer passes one or more tasks/jobs downstream, typically to be further transformed one or more physical threads of a worker node.

Introduction

We describe a system and various implementations of simplifying for a non-programming user creation of an entity management workflow. In particular, the technology disclosed includes generating for display a data entry columnar that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. In some implementations, the data entry columnar includes at least one column for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions. It also includes receiving data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar that define state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and by events that cause state transitions. The technology disclosed further includes measuring the conditions during a state transition against at least one value of a database field that the condition references and responsive to the conditions being satisfied, executing the alternative actions during the state transitions.

Internet of Things (IoT) is a new revolution of the Internet. Things or objects make themselves recognizable and obtain intelligence by making or enabling context related decisions thanks to the fact that they can communicate information about themselves. IoT is built on the foundation of big data. While big data computing and analytic systems like Pig™ were designed for software engineers with extensive programming skills, in most organizations, big data computing and analytics need to be accessible to many other individuals, such as domain experts (e.g., marketers, CEOs, sales representatives) who are not code developers. In addition, most users do not have the time to write fully developed workflow processes based on the big data.

Also, the current IoT applications that implement entity lifecycle management operations are often developed by technical experts for other technical experts and are complex for non-technical users. As a result, the usability of current IoT applications for programmers with little formal methods experience may be very limited. Moreover, most of the IoT solutions, commercial or research-driven, are mere applications rather than flexible frameworks and require extensive reprogramming for use in different situations and for different purposes, thus being inherently oriented towards code construction.

To address these technical challenges, the technology disclosed offers a declarative framework that implements a state machine for multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. The declarative framework is usable over and over for a broad range of applications because it provides a simple rule-based authoring tool that can be used for specifying different elements and components of a complex state machine, including state definitions, state transition triggers, state transition conditions and state transition actions. Once defined, the state machine is automatically generated and implemented based on the declarative input provided by a non-technical user.

Our world today is composed of the 1s and 0s that make up the binary code created by the streams of data flowing through every sector of the global economy. How much data is that?

According to IBM, 1 2.5 exabytes of data were created every day in 2012. That is 2.5 billion gigabytes of data in a single day. Facebook alone was responsible for 500,000 gigabytes a day in the same year. The importance of data is becoming so big, even the U.S. Government has launched an initiative, Data.gov, to help access and analyze it. The good news is that data processing and storage costs have decreased by a factor of more than 1,000 over the past decade. But once that data is stored, it is difficult to retrieve and use.

According to The Boston Consulting Group, one third of all bank data is never used. A big part of this is the fact that 75% of the data we generate is unstructured. It is randomly organized, difficult to index, and therefore difficult to retrieve.

Where is all of this data coming from? An obvious source is the data that is being generated from legacy systems of record. It is data from cloud software as witnessed by the rapid adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) as the new business application model.

It is data being created every second from mobile phones, devices, and sensors that are being placed on just about everything that can be monitored in the physical world. And social media represents the largest data streams, which are being created in astronomical volumes.

Forget about texts, and think of all the photos and videos being uploaded via smartphones to popular services like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

The smartphone is currently the major enabler of this data tsunami. PCs and feature phones (mobile phones that are not smartphones) are both in decline while smartphones are growing in the opposite direction, even in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa. And where there is a smartphone, there is an application. An application for practically every human endeavor.

Applications are the smartphone control point for all of the real-time data streams being created by our fingers, the camera, the motion sensor, GPS antenna, Bluetooth antenna, and gyroscope. Smartphone manufacturers continue to jam more sensors and capabilities into these devices while developers continue to build applications that delight us all.

According to The Economist, 50% of the adult population in 2015 owns a smartphone. That will grow to 80% in 2020. But as impressive as smartphones are, the biggest ripple is just forming. To use a term coined by Andreessen Horowitz, it is the “sensorification” of the physical world. The combination of cheap, connected, miniaturized computers and sensors will create a world of smart, connected products and industrial equipment.

This new technology category is often called the “Internet of Things” (IoT). General Electric goes one step further, with the term “industrial internet”, to include things like jet engines, locomotives, and MRI machines.

The Internet of Things represents a major and transformational wave of IT innovation. The Harvard Business Review calls this the third wave of IT-driven competition, with the first two waves brought by mainframes and minicomputers, and the rise of the Internet. Needless to say, harnessing and analyzing these data streams will represent the biggest challenge IT and businesses will face over the next decade.

The apt term used to describe this massive volume of data is “Big Data. For Big Data, traditional data storage technology is inadequate to deal with these large, high-speed volumes. And the challenges don not end there.

Enterprises will also need to figure out how to not only capture this data, but how to search, analyze, and visualize it as well as connect it with their business and customer data. The ultimate goal is the ability to perform predictive analytics and real-time intelligent decision-making. This is going to require an IT transformation from systems of record to systems of intelligence.

Before the advent of big data, the concept of business intelligence (BI) had already become a commonly used phrase back in the 1990s. A number of newly formed BI software vendors also entered the market at that time.

BI provided the methods and tools required for the transformation of data into meaningful and useful information for the business. The functions of BI during this period were fairly basic, namely, to collect and organize the data and visualize it in a presentable way.

Innovations continued and the introduction of data warehouses drastically reduced the time it took to access enterprise data from systems of record. Despite these innovations, a core challenge remains. Setting up these data warehouses requires deep expertise and using BI tools requires significant training.

The mere mortals in the line of business still cannot use these tools in an accessible way. Most BI tools are pretty good at getting answers when you know ahead of time the questions you are asking. Sometimes you simply do not know what questions to ask. In short, these tools do not enable business users to obtain the insights when, how, and where they need them.

Fortunately, this is all changing. For the first time, data analytics tools are being built that are entirely designed and run in the cloud. There is no need for IT to provision hardware or install and configure the data platform. Performing all the associated integration and schema development has gone from months to days. This newfound agility has allowed innovation in technology to eliminate the traditional two-step service bureau model where every request from the line of business required It is involvement.

These innovations are paving the way for a democratization of data so that business users can not only get access to data but also participate in its analysis. This means a self-service model with direct access to answers without the need for analysts, data scientists, or IT. Business users can find and share answers almost instantly. There is no hard requirement of needing to know ahead of time what questions to ask of the data. Business users can quickly bang out questions that allow them to explore and gain insights into the data sets.

Furthermore, this democratization is powered by mobile. Using their smartphone, tablets, or wearables, workers can now gain access to data and answers to pressing business questions whenever and wherever they are. The democratization of data has become a necessary phase in the journey toward building systems of intelligence.

While the fruits of data democratization are plenty, the process itself mostly deals with empowering business users with access to and analysis of data from legacy systems of record and cloud-based business applications. At best, some of these new BI tools can provide near real-time access and analysis of data. But they are not engineered for capturing and analyzing actual real-time streams of data emanating from smartphones, wearables, and the coming explosion of sensors in the physical world.

Real-time data streams deliver information that is quite different from the backward-looking, historical data most BI tools and platforms harness. Real-time data is perishable. That means it not only needs to be detected, it needs to be acted upon. The concept of “time to insight” emerges as one of the key performance indicators for systems of intelligence. These insights are going to require a whole new level of packaging and consumption. The information needs to be delivered in context, at the right time, and in a way that cuts through the cacophony of data we are exposed to in our daily work lives.

Systems of intelligence require knowing what to do with the data insights and how they should be delivered to the appropriate worker based on their job function and role inside the organization. These systems are every bit as democratic as modem BI tools in that they are easy to configure and get up and running. They are also designed to deal with the daily deluge of data we are confronted with every day at work. Consumer applications such as social media, traffic, and news aggregating applications help us more intelligently deal with the things that matter to us most.

The bar for applications connected to our systems of intelligence is as high as for consumer applications. This means one click installation, a lovely and simple user interface, and accessibility via the mobile device of your choosing. The harnessing and analysis of real-time data streams begins to open up not only action in real time, but the ability to anticipate what is going to happen. This has traditionally been the realm of data scientists who handle everything from statistics and computational modeling to visualization and reporting. Models created by data scientists mostly look at past historical trends and use the data to predict patterns and future trends. Trying to build computational models that look at large volumes of real-time data streams presents a significant human resource challenge for enterprises.

According to McKinsey Global Institute, by 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills, as well as a shortage of 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

Few companies have the data scientists to both analyze real-time big data streams and do something with it. Many organizations simply cannot fill existing open jobs with qualified individuals. Nor will universities prepare enough data scientists to meet the demand in the coming years. But let's say you get your data scientists in place to analyze and structure the data. What next? How do you translate this into something actionable? How do you train your line managers and directors to make sense of the analysis in order to make the right decisions?

While systems of intelligence will not be replacing data scientists anytime soon, these systems will go a long way toward alleviating the need to hire a huge staff of data scientists. Systems of intelligence harness and scale the collective wisdom, expertise, and gained insights of the organization such that intelligent decision-making becomes the sum of all these. The collective intelligence can be expressed like rules in a rules engine. These are powerful tools that allow business users to take this collective intelligence and compose simple, logical business rules that evaluate and analyze real-time data streams to produce intelligent decisions.

Data science includes the process of formulating a quantitative question that can be answered with data, collecting and cleaning the data, analyzing the data, and communicating the answer to the question to a relevant audience.

Most of the initial fruits harvested by enterprises from their systems of intelligence will be of the low-hanging variety, namely, value obtained from the expression of simple business rules described above. But as organizations gain greater insights from their systems of intelligence and more devices and sensors become part of the equation, the role of algorithms and machine learning will play a larger part in intelligent decision-making.

Enterprises will increasingly turn to artificial intelligence as they will never be able to hire enough business analysts and data scientists to sift through all the data. Credit card fraud detection is a great example and it is becoming quite sophisticated.

Artificial intelligence does not totally eliminate the need for a trained fraud expert, but it drastically reduces the number of suspicious cases that require human investigation.

There will be many considerations to explore as organizations spin up their big data efforts. It is going to require the right people, the right tools, and the right methods. The technology that is coming together today is essentially unbounded in the sources and magnitudes of the data sets. It is ready to handle ad hoc questions to whatever depth you care to go.

The next step beyond this are the systems of intelligence that start to tell customers what questions they need to be asking. Getting there will require a blueprint for systems of intelligence.

The source of data streams are the signals emanating in real-time from mobile devices such as smartphones and consumer wearables like the Fitbit and Apple Watch. The control point for these signals is the application.

The application is what puts context behind the raw data that gets created by human inputs and the sensors embedded in these devices.

According to Wikipedia, a sensor is a transducer whose purpose is to sense or detect some characteristic of its environs. It detects events or changes in quantities and provides a corresponding output, generally as an electrical or optical signal.

Tying all of this together is the digital plumbing, or application programming interfaces (APIs). Along every critical element of the data stream flow represented in this schematic, APIs will enable this end to end transport of high speed and high volume data in the system. Although the term, API, may not be in the common vernacular outside of

IT, it will be, much in the same way that terms of art to describe the web and internet are common language in business communication today.

The major gushers of data streams will be the connected consumer products and industrial equipment and machines. These real-time signals will emanate from product sensors inside our automobiles, inside our homes, on our valuables, our security systems, and anywhere in our physical environment that matters.

Signals from the industrial internet will emanate from sensors on any piece of equipment or machine that requires monitoring, maintenance and repair. Anything than can be digitally monitored with sensors in the physical environment will be. Systems of intelligence must be able to identify these signals and harness them.

In order to capture the high-volume and high-speed data signals, a “digital watchdog” is needed to monitor these signal inputs. If anything significant happens with these digital signals, an event is registered. A very simple example of an event is when a temperature sensor goes off in your automobile to warn you of freezing conditions outside.

Systems of intelligence will require the technology to ingest and monitor these data streams. The events created by the digital signals get broadcasted via messages and moved through the system so that the digestion process can proceed as planned. This is where filters can begin their job of further analyzing these data streams. For the system to function properly, it must be able to handle growing volumes and increased speeds of data flow and must not be lost if there is a breakdown or crash in that system.

Once data is captured and processed, it moves along into the digestion phase. This is where some of the magic starts to happen. This includes the monitoring and analytical processing of real-time data streams. Once the data is analyzed and processed, it needs to be put somewhere.

The data streams flowing in are not suitable for traditional database storage such as relational databases using structured query language. This requires specialized technology that can handle and store very large data sets, an essential element of systems of intelligence.

Another key component of this system is the ability to apply filters in the form of business rules that get applied to the analysis of the data streams. This will begin the process of eliminating human errors by expressing the collective wisdom and expert knowledge of the organization directly into the system. Artificial intelligence in the form of machine learning and algorithms can also be applied to these data streams for further analysis.

Enterprise data is comprised of the systems of record and systems of engagement that represent the mainstream of enterprise IT today. As IT migrated from mainframes and minicomputers to PCs and the Internet, systems of record have largely been about moving what were paper and manual processes into the digital era. Systems of record have been about automating everyday activities, capturing of their information by products, and reporting what are essentially historical documents

Systems of engagement are fundamentally different from systems of record in that they focus on the social nature of conversations and interactions with customers, partners and employees. Social media and the consumerization of IT shape how these conversations occur and across what channels. Instead of digital artifacts that are document based, systems of engagement add the elements of time, context, and place. Systems of record do not go away; it is just that enterprises need to embrace next-generation communication and collaboration with systems of engagement.

Systems of engagement and systems of record will be essential elements in providing context to the data streams, filtering, and analysis. You cannot make sense of the data streams and outputs if you do not have the full picture of the customer, the partner, the employee. These systems will be essential to illuminating the analytical insights and intelligent decisions driven by systems of intelligence.

After ingesting, digesting, and applying enterprise context to the data streams, the intelligent outputs are produced and delivered in the right form, at the right time, and to the right channel. The first two channels are dashboards and insights. Dashboards drive visualization and context of what is and what has happened so that humans can explore and take actions like launching new company initiatives, tweaking existing marketing programs, or refining the rules based on intelligent decision-making. Insights rely more on delivering real-time decision-making. It is a key difference between dashboards and analytical insights. Expressing the collective knowledge and expertise of the organization through business rules goes a long way toward eliminating bad decisions that are easily avoidable. As signals increase and data streams flow into systems of intelligence, data scientists will be able to better apply their methods and models to create machine learning algorithms that deliver intelligent decisions in a predictive manner.

Moving along to the final phase of our data streams journey, the enterprise can now begin to apply the fruits of the intelligent outputs to commence the transformation of the business. Our central premise is that behind every application, device, connected product, and sensor is a customer. The role of IoT platform disclosed herein is to connect device data to the user success platform for engaging customers through sales, customer service, marketing, communities, applications and analytics.

The technology disclosed relates to simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow by using computer-implemented systems. The technology disclosed can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system including a database system, a multi-tenant environment, or a relational database implementation like an Oracle™ compatible database implementation, an IBM DB2 Enterprise Server™ compatible relational database implementation, a MySQL™ or PostgreSQL™ compatible relational database implementation or a Microsoft SQL Server™ compatible relational database implementation or a NoSQL non-relational database implementation such as a Vampire™ compatible non-relational database implementation, an Apache Cassandra™ compatible non-relational database implementation, a BigTable™ compatible non-relational database implementation or an HBase™ orDynamoDB™ compatible non-relational database implementation.

Moreover, the technology disclosed can be implemented using two or more separate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate and communicate with one another. The technology disclosed can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a process, a method, an apparatus, a system, a device, a computer readable medium such as a computer readable storage medium that stores computer readable instructions or computer program code, or as a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having a computer readable program code embodied therein.

In addition, the technology disclosed can be implemented using different programming models like MapReduce™, bulk synchronous programming, MPI primitives, etc. or different stream management systems like Apache Storm™, Apache Spark™, Apace Kafka™, Truviso™, IBM Info-Sphere™, Borealis™ and Yahoo! S4™.

IoT Platform and Stream-Batch Processing Framework

We describe a system and various implementations of simplifying for a non-programming user creation of an entity management workflow. The system and processes will be described with reference to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 showing an architectural level schematic of a system in accordance with an implementation. Because FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 are architectural diagrams, certain details are intentionally omitted to improve the clarity of the description. The discussion of FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 will be organized as follows. First, the elements of respective figures will be described, followed by their interconnections. Then, the use of the elements in the system will be described in greater detail.

FIG. 1 includes exemplary IoT platform 100. IoT platform 100 includes data sources 102, input connectors 104, stream container(s) 106, batch container(s) 108, rich contextual data store 110, orchestration system 112, output connectors 122 and application(s)123. The rich contextual data store 110 includes various storage nodes C1-C3. Orchestration 112 includes a data entry columnar 114, an explorer engine 115, a live dashboard builder engine 116, a morphing engine 117, a tweening engine 118, a tweening stepper 119, an integrated development environment (IDE) 121 and a rendering engine 120. Application(s) 123 include various SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings.

FIG. 2 illustrates a stream processing framework 200 used in the platform shown in FIG. 1, according to one implementation of the technology disclosed. Framework 200 includes data sources 102, input pipeline 204, stream container 106, rich contextual data store 110 and output pipeline 218. Stream container 106 includes an emitter tier 206, a scheduler 208, a coordinator 210 and a worker tier 214.

The interconnection of the elements of IoT platform 100 and streaming framework 200 will now be described. A network (not shown) couples the data sources 102, the input connectors 104, the stream container 106, the batch container 108, the rich contextual data store 110, the orchestration system 112, the columnar 114, the output connectors 122, the application(s) 123, the input pipeline 204, the emitter tier 206, the scheduler 208, the coordinator 210, the worker tier 214 and the output pipeline 218, all in communication with each other (indicated by solid arrowed lines). The actual communication path can be point-to-point over public and/or private networks. Some items, such as data from data sources 102, might be delivered indirectly, e.g. via an application store (not shown). All of the communications can occur over a variety of networks, e.g. private networks, VPN, MPLS circuit, or Internet, and can use appropriate APIs and data interchange formats, e.g. REST, JSON, XML, SOAP and/or JMS. All of the communications can be encrypted. The communication is generally over a network such as the LAN (local area network), WAN (wide area network), telephone network (Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), wireless network, point-to-point network, star network, token ring network, hub network, Internet, inclusive of the mobile Internet, via protocols such as EDGE, 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi and WiMAX. Additionally, a variety of authorization and authentication techniques, such as username/password, OAuth, Kerberos, SecureID, digital certificates and more, can be used to secure the communications.

Having described the elements of FIG. 1(IoT platform 100) and FIG. 2 (streaming framework 200) and their interconnections, the system will now be described in greater detail.

Data sources 102 are entities such as a smart phone, a WiFi access point, a sensor or sensor network, a mobile application, a web client, a log from a server, a social media site, etc. In one implementation, data from data sources 102 are accessed via an API Application Programming Interface that allows sensors, devices, gateways, proxies and other kinds of clients to register data sources 102 in the IoT platform 100 so that data can be ingested from them. Data from the data sources 102 can include events in the form of structured data (e.g. user profiles and the interest graph), unstructured text (e.g. tweets) and semi-structured interaction logs. Examples of events include device logs, clicks on links, impressions of recommendations, numbers of logins on a particular client, server logs, user's identities (sometimes referred to as user handles or user IDs and other times the users' actual names), content posted by a user to a respective feed on a social network service, social graph data, metadata including whether comments are posted in reply to a prior posting, events, news articles, and so forth. Events can be in a semi-structured data format like a JSON (JavaScript Option Notation), BSON (Binary JSON), XML, Protobuf, Avro or Thrift object, which present string fields (or columns) and corresponding values of potentially different types like numbers, strings, arrays, objects, etc. JSON objects can be nested and the fields can be multi-valued, e.g., arrays, nested arrays, etc., in other implementations.

As described infra, near real-time (NRT) data streams 103 are collections of events that are registered as they are generated by an entity. In one implementation, events are delivered over HTTP to input pipeline 204. In another implementation, events are transmitted via POST requests to a receiver operating on behalf of input pipeline 204. For instance, Twitter Firehose API (accessible via Twitter-affiliated companies like Datashift, nTweetStreamer, tiwwter4j) provides unbounded time stamped events, called tweets, as a stream of JSON objects along with metadata about those tweets, including timestamp data about the tweets, user information, location, topics, keywords, retweets, followers, following, timeline, user line, etc. These JSON objects are stored in a schema-less or NoSQL key-value data-store like Apache Cassandra™, Google's BigTable™, HBase™, Voldemort™, CouchDB™, MongoDB™, Redis™, Riak™, Neo4j™, etc., which stores the parsed JSON objects using key spaces that are equivalent to a database in SQL. Each key space is divided into column families that are similar to tables and comprise of rows and sets of columns.

The input connectors 104 acquire data from data sources 102 and transform the data into an input format that is consumable by containers 106 and 108. In one implementation, the input connectors 104 perform full data pulls and/or incremental data pulls from the data sources 102. In another implementation, the input connectors 104 also access metadata from the data sources 102. For instance, the input connectors 104 issue a “describe” API call to fetch the metadata for an entity and then issue the appropriate API call to fetch the data for the entity. In some implementations, customized input connectors 104 are written using the Connector SDK™ for individual data sources 102.

In other implementations, a workflow definition includes a collection of connectors and operators as well as the order to execute them. In one implementation, such a workflow is specified as a directed graph, where connectors and operators are graph nodes and edges reflect the data flow. In yet other implementations, multiple data streams 103 are joined and transformed before being fed to the containers 106 and 108.

Batch processing framework operating in container(s) 108 generates business intelligence using OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP) queries, which are stored in rich contextual data store 110. In one implementation, events are stored in batch container(s) 108 to act as a backup for raw events on which batch processing jobs can run at any given time. Batch container(s) 108, in some implementations, provides raw counts as well as descriptive statistics such as mean, median and percentile breakdowns. In one implementation, analytics tool like Scalding™ and Pig™ are included in batch container(s) 108 to provide retrospective analysis, machine learning modeling, and other batch analytics. In yet other implementations, batch container(s) 108 is used to correct errors made by the stream container 106 or to handle upgraded capabilities by running analytics on historical data and recompute results. Examples of a batch processing framework include Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) implementing a MapReduce programming model.

Batch container(s) 108 ingest event tuples from respective input pipelines that collect data for a plurality of NRT data streams. In some implementations, multiple NRT data streams can be assigned to a single pipeline and multiple pipelines can be assigned to a single batch container.

Stream processing framework 200 provides near real-time (NRT) processing of sequences of unbounded events for delivery of immediate analytics and insights based on the events as they are occurring. In one implementation, framework 200 processes one millions events per second per node. Framework 200 can be implemented using one or more stream processors like Apache Storm™ and Apache Samza™ or a batch-stream processor such as Apache Spark™. In one implementation, framework 200 includes an API to write jobs that run over a sequence of event-tuples and perform operations over those event-tuples.

Events are ingested into framework 200 by input pipeline 204, which reads data from the data sources 102 and holds events for consumption by the stream container 106. In one implementation, input pipeline 204 is a single delivery endpoint for events entering the container 106. Examples of input pipeline 204 include Apache Kafka™, Flume™, ActiveMQ™, RabbitMQ™, HTTP/HTTPS servers, UDP sockets, and others. In some implementations, input pipeline 204 includes a listener capable of listening NRT data streams 103 and data flows originating from the data sources 102 by connecting with their respective AP is (e.g., Chatter API, Facebook API (e.g., Open Graph), Twitter API (e.g., Twitter Firehose, Sprinklr, Twitter Search API, Twitter Streaming API), Yahoo API (e.g., Boss search) etc. via the Internet. In some implementations, a listener includes heterogeneous instances responsible for the intake of data from different data sources 102. According to an implementation, the input pipeline 204 can be configured to receive the data over the network(s) using an application protocol layer, or other higher protocol layer, such as HTTP protocol layer, among many possible standard and proprietary protocol layers. These higher protocol layers can encode, package and/or reformat data for sending and receiving messages over a network layer, such as Internet Protocol (IP), and/or a transport layer, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and/or User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

In a particular implementation, Apache Kafka™ is used as the input pipeline 204. Kafka is a distributed messaging system with a publish and subscribe model. Kafka maintains events in categories called topics. Events are published by so-called producers and are pulled and processed by so-called consumers. As a distributed system, Kafka runs in a cluster, and each node is called a broker, which stores events in a replicated commit log. In other implementations, different messaging and queuing systems can be used.

In one implementation, NRT data streams 103 are queued in input pipeline 204 as batches. In one implementation, a batch is defined as an assemblage of event tuples, also referred to as “units of work”, defined on a time-slice basis and/or a batch-size basis. A time-slice based definition includes partitioning at least one incoming NRT data stream by its most recently received portion within a time window (e.g., one batch keeps the event tuples from last one second). A batch-size based definition includes partitioning at least one incoming NRT data stream by a most recently received portion limited or restricted to or constrained by a data size (e.g., one batch includes 10 MB of most recently received event tuples). In other implementations, a combination of time-size basis and batch-size basis is used to define batches.

In a particular implementation, Apache Storm™ operates in stream container 106 and performs real-time computation using a matrix of user-submitted directed acyclic graph, comprised of a network of nodes called “Spouts” or “emitter nodes” (collectively referred to as the emitter tier 206 in FIG. 2) and “Bolts” or “worker nodes” (collectively referred to as the worker tier 214 in FIG. 2). In a Storm matrix, a Spout is the source of NRT data streams 103 and a Bolt holds the business logic for analyzing and processing those streams to produce new data as output and passing the output to the next stage in the matrix. In one implementation, a special Kafka Spout emits events read from a Kafka topic as batches to the bolts in worker tier 214.

Worker tier 214 includes bolts or worker nodes (shown as cubes in FIG. 2) that perform various stream processing jobs such as simple data transformation like id to name lookups, up to complex operations such as multi-stream joins. Specifically, worker nodes in the worker tier 214 can perform tasks like aggregations, functions and stream groupings (e.g., shuffle grouping, fields grouping, all grouping, global grouping, filtering and commits to external persistence layers like rich contextual data store 110. In some implementations, worker nodes in a worker tier 214 have transitive dependencies between related processing stages where upstream stages produce event tuples that are consumed by downstreamstages.

The messages passed within stream container 106 are called tuples. A tuple is a set of values for a pre-defined set of fields. Each spout and bolt defines the fields of the tuples it emits statically in advance. All tuples are serialized into a binary form before transmission to other components in the stream container 106. In some implementations, this serialization is handled by the Kryo library, which provides a fast serialization of Java object.

Stream container 106 allows for parallelization of spouts and bolts using different tuple grouping strategies to pass event streams. The grouping strategy defines the partitioning of an event stream and controls the degree of parallelism of the next computational unit, where degree of parallelism refers to the number of parallel executions.

Scheduler 208 tracks one or more input pipelines (e.g., input pipeline 204) in the streaming coordinator 106 and schedules execution of batches and any downstream stages that depend on the output of an upstream completed stage. In one implementation, scheduler 208 assigns a unique batch identifier (ID) to each batch in the input pipeline 204. Further, scheduler 208 triggers either a resend of the current batch or the next batch along with corresponding stage information on a per pipeline basis. Scheduler 208 also sends messages to the coordinator 210 in the form [pipeline:‘a’,batch:7,stage‘b’]. In some other implementations, scheduler 208 assigns priority-levels to different pipelines in the IoT platform 100. These priority-levels control execution of a first number of batches from a first pipeline before execution of a second number of batches from a second pipeline.

Coordinator 210 controls dispatch of batches to worker nodes in the worker tier 214. When the scheduler 208 triggers a batch-stage, the coordinator 210 sends triggers to the emitter tier 206 and worker tier 214 who are responsible for that particular stage. When [pipeline:‘a’,batch:7,stage‘b’] is received by the coordinator 210, it contacts two of the hundred available worker nodes. These are the two worker nodes that received input from stage‘a’.

Coordinator 210 also tracks pending units of work in the streaming container 106 for a given batch-stage to enable efficient “long-tail” operations where it is likely that a substantial portion of the allocated resources for a process may not be needed for a particular batch. Take a single distributed operation having stage [a] and stage [b] such that the output of stage [a] is used at stage [b], represented as stage [a]->stage [b]. Now, assume that according to one implementation stage [a] runs on hundred worker nodes (each running on a physical node) and stage [b] runs on hundred worker nodes (each running on a physical node) and stage [a] produces output only for two instances of stage [b]. When stage [a] has fully executed and stage [b] begins, the coordinator 210 knows that only two of the hundred worker nodes allocated to stage [b] need to be invoked. Similarly for three stage processing, represented as stage [a]->stage [b]->stage [c], where stage [b] receives no input from stage [a] and therefore stage [c] will also receive no input, coordinator 210 avoids all extraneous communication to stage [b] and stage [c]. In the case of all data in stage [a] being filtered out, there is no communication overhead with the worker nodes allocated to stage [b] and stage [c].

Streaming container(s) 106 ingest event tuples from respective input pipelines that collect data for a plurality of NRT data streams. In some implementations, multiple NRT data streams can be assigned to a single pipeline and multiple pipelines can be assigned to a single stream container.

Rich contextual data store 110 stores large volumes of historical data and allows for historical query based analytics that are combined with near real-time analytics. In one implementation, rich contextual data store 110 is used to take a snapshot of tasks in the IoT platform 100 and store state information about the pipelines, spouts, bolts and other elements of the IoT platform 100. In some implementations rich contextual data store 110 is a NoSQL key-value column store distributed storage system like Apache Cassandra™. Data sent to Cassandra™ is spread out across many nodes or commodity servers C1-C3, connections to which can be made using a Java, Scala, Ruby, Clojure or Python based APis (e.g., Hector, Pelops, CQL, Thrift, Phpcassa, PyCassa, etc.). Cassandra stores data in units called columns. Each column is a tuple, a list of associated data elements. The basic column format can be represented as (name, value, timestamp). For brevity, the timestamp, while an essential element of the column, is often not written. Thus, an example column may be written (UserName, User-I). An optional level of hierarchy called a super column may incorporate any number of columns. Moving up a level, keys (sometimes referred to as rows) are tuples that include a name and one or more columns or super columns. An example key may be written (Status_Key, (UserName, User-I), (Logged_In, Y). Any number of keys may be grouped into a column family. Analogously, a group of column families is referred to as the keyspace, the final level of hierarchy. Two pseudo code representations of the relationship can be constructed as follows:

-   -   [keyspace] [column family] [key][column]     -   [keyspace] [column family] [key][super column] [column]

Output pipeline 218 collects and queues processed events for delivery to a persistent store. In one implementation, data from output pipeline 218 is transmitted concurrently to a SQL data store and NoSQL data store like rich contextual data store 110. Output pipeline 218 can also be hosted by Kafka, which acts a sink for the output of the jobs.

Orchestration

Orchestration 112 is a web platform that enables non-programmers to construct and run an entity management workflow. Orchestration 112 utilizes a declarative and visual programming model that generates a data entry columnar 114, discussed infra relative to FIG. 4A, FIG. 4B and FIG. 4C, which accepts declarative and drag-drop input. In one implementation, orchestration 112 allows non-programmers to design their own workflows visually without extensive programming knowledge. In one implementation, orchestration 112 uses a formal declarative description stored in a JSON configuration file. The JSON file defines behaviors used in a session, including states of an entity during a life cycle that specify events to handle, state transition triggers, the transition rules to be used, and responsive actions that specify the actions rules to be used, along with other parameters and variables to be used in a workflow. In other implementations, different programming languages like hypertext markup language (HTML), standard generalized markup language (SGML), declarative markup language (DML), extensible markup language (XAML), extensible stylesheet language (XSL), extensible stylesheet language transformations (XSLT), functional programming language like Haskell and ML, logic programming language like Prolog, dataflow programming language like Lucid, rule-based languages like Jess, Lips and CLIPS, and others.

In another implementation, orchestration 112 includes a declarative component and a run-time component. Using the declarative component, a non-programmer declares entity states, transition triggers for the states, responsive actions for the states and other parameters and variables of the entity lifecycle workflow. In one implementation, the declarative component offers existing workflow or workflow excerpts common used by other users and communities. In one implementation, the declarative input is received at a browser in a visual manner rather than as a result of writing code. The declarative input is then translated by orchestration 112 into a package of declarative files (e.g., XML) that can be directly executed in the run-time component.

In a further implementation, the run-time component of orchestration 112 includes a translator that interprets the declarative files using relational and XML-native persistent services, gateway, SOAP, REST API and semantic functionalities like machine learning, clustering, classifier-based classification and recommendation, context text analysis, text extraction and modeling, deep linguistic analysis and expressions based alphanumeric pattern detection.

In yet another implementation, orchestration 112 serves as a rule engine and scripting environment for non-declarative languages like Java and C++. In such an implementation, orchestration 112 provides rule-based programming in a high-level procedural or imperative programming language by continuously applying a set of rules to a set of facts. The rules can modify the facts or execute and procedural or imperative code (e.g., Java code). In some implementations, orchestration 112 includes a graphical rule development environment based on an integrated development environment (IDE) providing editor functions, code formatting, error checking, run and debug commands and a graphical debugger.

Orchestration 112 also includes an explorer engine 115, a live dashboard builder engine 116, a morphing engine 117, a tweening engine 118, a tweening stepper 119, an integrated development environment (IDE) 121 and a rendering engine 120.

A disclosed live dashboard builder engine 116 designs dashboards, displaying multiple analytics developed using the explorer engine 115 as real-time data query results. That is, a non-technical user can arrange display charts for multiple sets of query results from the explorer engine 115 on a single dashboard. When a change to a rule-base affects any display chart on the dashboard, the remaining display charts on the dashboard get updated to reflect the change. Accurate live query results are produced and displayed across all display charts on the dashboard.

In one implementation, a real-time query language called “EQL language” is used by orchestration 112 to enable data flows as a means of aligning results. It enables ad hoc analysis of registered event tuples. A non-technical user can specify state definitions, state transition triggers, state transition conditions and state transition actions to change query parameters, and can choose different display options, such as a bar chart, pie chart or scatter plot—triggering a real-time change to the display chart—based on a live data query using the updated rule-base. Statements in an EQL are made up of keywords (such as filter, group, and order), identifiers, literals, or special characters. EQL is declarative; you describe what you want to get from your query. Then, a query engine will decide how to efficiently serveit.

In one implementation, a runtime framework with an event bus handles communication between application(s)123 running on user computing devices, a query engine (not shown) and an integrated development environment 121, which provides a representation of animated data visualizations implemented in a hierarchy of levels including states, triggers, state transitions, responsive actions, entity activity levels and variations among them overtime.

Integrated development environment 121 provides a representation of animated data visualizations and provides an interface for processing animation scripts that animate transitions between the shapes applied to data visualizations. Example animation transitions include scaling so that charts fit the display environment, and are not clipped; and rotations between vertical and horizontal display. Animation scripts are represented using non-procedural data structures that represent shapes to be rendered, and that represent animations of the transitions between the shapes to be rendered. In one example implementation, JSON can be used to express the generated non-procedural data structures.

Rendering engine 120 transforms non-procedural data structures that represent the shapes and the animation of transitions between the shapes, into rendered graphics.

In other implementations, orchestration 112 may not have the same elements as those listed above and/or may have other/different elements instead of, or in addition to, those listed above.

The output connectors 122 send data from orchestration 112 and/or output pipeline 218 and transform the data into an output format that is consumable by application(s)123. In one implementation, the output connectors 122 perform full data pushes and/or incremental data pushes from the orchestration 112. In another implementation, the output connectors 122 also provide metadata from orchestration 112. In some implementations, customized output connectors 122 are written using the Connector SDK™ for individual application(s)123.

Application(s) 123 include components adapted for operating in the IoT platform 100. The IoT platform 100, or an analog, can be provided by a node such as an application server node. Application(s) 123 can include an incoming and outgoing data handler component for receiving and transmitting information from and to the plurality of application server nodes via the network(s).

In an implementation, the application(s)123 include a data store for storing a plurality of data objects including a plurality of contact records, a plurality of account records, and/or other records (collectively application records). In some implementations, an application record can include, but is not limited to, a tuple corresponding to a user, a file, a folder, an opportunity, an account, an event, and/or any data object. Application(s) 123 can include a data manager component that can be configured to insert, delete, and/or update the records stored in the data store. In addition, application(s) 123 can include a monitoring agent that is configured to monitor activities related to the application records. For example, the monitoring agent can be configured to track a user's post via a public or private social networking service, and/or a user's e-mail client on the user's enterprise desktop computer, and to monitor updates to the contact records, event records, and/or any other application record(s) stored in the data store.

Processed events can additionally be used by application(s)123, such as Salesforce.com offerings like Sales Cloud™, Data.com™, Service Cloud™ Desk.com™, Marketing Cloud™, Pardot™, Service Cloud™ and Wave Analytics™. For example, processed events can be used to identify opportunities, leads, contacts, and so forth, in the application(s)123, or can be used to support marketing operations with products such as Radian6™, Buddy Media™ services, and the like. The processed events can also then in turn be used to find these specific users again on these social networks, using matching tools provided by the social network providers. Additionally they could also be layered with specific targeting learned from the aggregation and analysis by the streaming container 106 and orchestration 112 respectively.

In an implementation, IoT platform 100 can be located in a cloud computing environment, and may be implemented as a multi-tenant database system. As used herein, the term multi-tenant database system refers to those systems in which various elements of hardware and software of the database system may be shared by one or more tenants. For example, a given application server may simultaneously process requests for a great number of tenants, and a given database table may store rows for multiple tenants.

In some implementations, the elements or components of IoT platform 100 can be engines of varying types including workstations, servers, computing clusters, blade servers, server farms, or any other data processing systems or computing devices. The elements or components can be communicably coupled to the databases via a different network connection. For example, streaming container 106 can be coupled via the network(s) (e.g., the Internet), batch container 108 can be coupled via a direct network link, and orchestration 112 can be coupled by yet a different network connection.

In some implementations, databases used in IoT platform 100 can store information from one or more tenants into tables of a common database image to form a multi-tenant database system. A database image can include one or more database objects. In other implementations, the databases can be relational database management systems (RDBMS), object oriented database management systems (OODBMS), distributed file systems (DFS), no-schema database management systems, or any other data storing systems or computing devices.

While IoT platform 100 is described herein with reference to particular blocks, it is to be understood that the blocks are defined for convenience of description and are not intended to require a particular physical arrangement of component parts. Further, the blocks need not correspond to physically distinct components. To the extent that physically distinct components are used, connections between components (e.g., for data communication) can be wired and/or wireless as desired. The different elements or components can be combined into single software modules and multiple software modules can run on the same hardware.

State Machine

FIG. 3 is one implementation of a state machine 300 implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. The diagram in FIG. 3 uses circles to represent states of an entity and arrows to represent transition triggers that cause transition from one state to another. Specifically, state machine 300 represents life cycle management of an electronic device, such as a thermostat sensor. In one implementation, the electronic device is periodically pinged to receive state information about the device such as the device's battery levels and network connectivity levels. The states depicted in state machine 300 include: a started state 302, 48 hours still bad 306, no events in long time state 310, create or update a case state 314, waiting for response state 318 and success state 328. Further, state machine 300 includes two types of transition triggers: event triggers 301, 309, and 320 and time triggers 303, 307, 311 and 313. Additionally, when the always rules are satisfied 322, the system maintains the success state 328. An event trigger causes state transitions when a certain event is registered from the NRT data streams. A time trigger causes state transitions upon overrunning of a timer. In other implementations, different transition triggers can be defined such as custom triggers that override a default trigger and cumulative triggers that occur when combinations of events are registered.

Turning to the multi-step progression of interaction with the thermostat shown in FIG. 3, when a device error is detected in the NRT event stream, a device error event trigger 301 is registered that causes initiation of a ticket workflow designed to fix the detected error by creating a case in a service application such as Salesforce Service Cloud™. This initiation of the ticket workflow is represented by a started state 302. When the event stream confirms that the device error has not been fixed for three days since it was detected, a day 3 timer trigger 303 causes transition of the ticket workflow from the started state 302 to a 48 hours still bad state 306. From the 48 hours still bad state 306, a subsequent state transition is caused by either a day 5 timer trigger 307 or a bad health event trigger 309. The day 5 timer trigger 307 causes transition of the ticket workflow from the 48 hours still bad state 306 to a no events in long time state 310 when the event stream confirms that the device error has not been fixed for five days since it was detected. In another implementation, the bad health event trigger 309 causes transition of the ticket workflow from the 48 hours still bad state 306 to a create or update a case state 314 when the event stream confirms that the device's battery levels are low or the device's network connectivity is poor or both conditions exist.

When the ticket workflow reaches a no events in long time state 310, it immediately transitions to the create or update a case state 314 using an immediate timer trigger 311. Once at the create or update a case state 314, ticket workflow transitions to a waiting for a response state 318 by an immediate timer trigger 313 based on the fact that whether an application that applies the state machine 300 has responded either by confirming that it has opened the case or whether it has failed in doing so.

Once at the waiting for a response state 318, if a case response event trigger 320 is registered that confirms that a case response was received, the ticket workflow transitions from the waiting for a response state 318 to the 48 hours still bad state 306.

In some implementations, the different states of the ticket workflow transition to a success state 328 upon registering always rules satisfied 322. In one exemplary implementation, the success state 328 represents receipt of events in the NRT event stream that confirm good health of the device i.e. the device's battery levels are high and the device's network connectivity is good. Whenever, the success state 328 is reached, the state machine 300 is in steady state.

Data Entry Columnar

FIG. 4A, FIG. 4B and FIG. 4C show a date entry columnar 400A-C that accepts declarative input to create the state machine illustrated in FIG. 3. More generally, date entry columnar 400A-C allows non-technical users to declaratively design complex state machines that represent sophisticated user management and resource provisioning operations, application life cycle management operations (such as Salesforce Thunder™ 401), traffic monitoring operations, activity tracking operations and application modeling operations.

In particular, date entry columnar 400A-C allows non-technical users to easily specify states of the state machine, time based transition triggers, event-based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions. In some implementations, date entry columnar 400A-C allows non-technical users to employ simple expressions for specifying the different variables and parameters of the state machine.

Turning to FIG. 4A, data entry columnar 400A allows users to identify different event based transition triggers 402 for a state machine. In the example shown in FIG. 4A, an event based transition trigger titled “device event type” 403 is created by selecting one of the option fields from a drop-down menu 404. In another implementation, custom event based transition triggers are created by clicking the “add event type” widget 408. For the device event type trigger 403, the conditions are specified by a non-technical user such that the device event type trigger 403 initiates the ticket workflow of FIG. 3 (referred to as an orchestration in FIG. 4A) upon selection a checkbox 405 by the non-technical user. Further, a condition 406 is set by the non-technical user that is measured against at least one value of a database field that the condition 406 incorporates. The example condition 406 used in FIG. 4A is whether the device's battery levels are low or the device's network connectivity is poor. This example condition 406 can be represented using the following simple expression.

-   -   !device.battery_good∥!device.wif_good

When the condition is satisfied, the device event type trigger 403 is executed. In other implementations, a description 407 of the device event type trigger 403 is received from the non-technical user.

Advancing further, different variables 409 (e.g., deviceID, caseResponse, subject, lastSubject, caseID) used in the condition definitions of data entry columnar 400A are specified by the non-technical user and mapped to respective event based transition triggers 410. In one implementation, the respective conditions 411 that incorporate the variables 409 are also identified by the non-technical user. In another implementation, respective values 412 for the variables 409 are specified by the non-technical user along with an initial value description 413 of the respective variables 409. In addition, custom variables can be created by clicking the “add variable” widget 414. The above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like.

Furthermore, the non-technical user can identify the different states (e.g., always, started, 48 hours still bad, no events in a long time, create or update a case, waiting for a response) of a state machine using columnar 415. The non-technical user can also link to a particular state via columnar 415 with the transition triggers 416 that cause transition from that state to another state, the conditions 417, which when satisfied, execute the transition triggers 416, and the actions 418 to take in response to the transition triggers 416. In other implementations, a description 419 of the Always states in columnar 415 and its triggers, conditions and actions are received from the non-technical user. The above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like. The particular state definition depicted in FIG. 4A shows that a global state titled “Always” is created (Success in FIG. 3). The always rules are satisfied when the conditions of the device's battery levels are good and the device's network connectivity is good are satisfied. This example condition is represented using a simple expression as:

-   -   device.battery_good && device.wifi_good.

When the condition is satisfied, the success state is maintained.

Turning to the started state 420 shown in FIG. 4B, the non-technical user specifies a day 3 timer type trigger 421 such that when the event stream confirms that the device error has not been fixed for three days since it was detected, then action 423 is executed, i.e. transition of the started state 420 to 48 hours still bad state 425. In other implementations, a description 424 of the started state 420 and its triggers, conditions and actions is received from the non-technical user.

For the 48 hours still bad state 425 depicted in the data entry columnar 400B of FIG. 4B, the non-technical user specifies two transition triggers—a device event type trigger 426 caused by the satisfaction of condition 427 and a day 5 timer type trigger 430 caused by the fact that the device error has not been fixed for five days since it was detected. The example condition 427 depicted in FIG. 4B includes three different sub-conditions 427 a-c i.e. first sub-condition 427 a being whether the device's battery levels are low and the device's network connectivity is poor; second sub-condition 427 b being whether just the device's battery levels are low; and third sub-condition 427 c being whether just the device's network connectivity is poor. The example condition 427 and its sub-conditions 427 a-c are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   !device.battery_good && !device.wifi_good     -   !device.battery_good     -   !device.wifi_good

If any one of these sub-conditions is met, then action 428 is executed. Action 428 includes three different sub-actions 428 a-c that respond individually to at least one sub-condition 427 a-c of the example condition 427. The first sub-action 428 a is responsive to first sub-condition 427 a and creates a subject that states that the device's battery levels are low and the device's network connectivity is poor. The second sub-action 428 b is responsive to second sub-condition 427 b and creates a subject that states that just the device's battery levels are low. The third sub-action 428 c is responsive to third sub-condition 427 c and creates a subject that states that just the device's network connectivity is poor.

In addition to the three sub-actions 428 a-c, action 428 also includes a “must action” 428 d that causes state transition of the 48 hours still bad state 425 to create or update a case state 436. The must action is executed regardless of which ones of the sub-conditions 427 a-c are met or the sub-actions 428 a-c executed, according to one implementation. The example action 428 and its sub-actions 428 a-c and must action 428 d are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   subject=“Battery voltage low and weak Wi-Fi”     -   subject=“Battery voltage low”     -   subject=“Wi-Fi weak”     -   Change state to Create or Update a case

Further, when a day 5 timer type trigger 430 times-out, action 431 is executed, which causes transition of the 48 hours still bad state 425 to no events in long time state 432. The example action 431 is represented by a simple expression specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   Change state to No Events in a Long Time

In other implementations, a description 429 of the 48 hours still bad state 425 and its triggers, conditions and actions is received from the non-technical user. All the above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like.

For no events in long time state 432 depicted in the data entry columnar 400C of FIG. 4C, the non-technical user specifies an immediate timer type trigger 433 that causes an immediate state transition from the no events in long time state 432 to the create or update a case state 436. The action 434 executed in response to the trigger 433 includes two sub-actions 434 a and 434 b. The first sub-action 434 a creates a subject that states that no event have been registered in a long time. The second sub-action 434 b is a “must action” and causes the state transition. The example action 434 and its sub-action 434 a and must action 434 b are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   subject=“No Events in a Long Time”     -   Change state to Create or Update a case

In other implementations, a description 435 of the no events in long time state 432 and its triggers, conditions and actions is received from the non-technical user. All the above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like.

For create or update a case state 436, the non-technical user specifies an immediate timer type trigger 437 that causes an immediate state transition from the create or update a case state 436 to the waiting for a response state 441. However, here the immediate timer type trigger 437 is caused by the satisfaction of condition 438. The example condition 438 includes two sub-conditions 438 a and 438 b. The first sub-condition 438 a evaluates whether fields of a created case form are blank. The second sub-condition 438 b evaluates whether fields of a last created case form are filled and whether the subject being evaluated is the subject of the last created case.

The example condition 438 and its sub-conditions 438 a-b are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   ISBLANK(case)     -   !ISBLANK(caseID) && (subject!=lastSubject)

If at least one of the sub-conditions 438 a-b is met, then action 439 is executed. Action 439 includes sub-actions 439 a, 439 b and 439 c and causes state transition to the waiting for a response state 441.

The example action 439 and its sub-action 439 a-c are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   Upsert? in?     -   Change state to Waiting for a Response     -   Upsert? in? Change state to Waiting for a Response

In other implementations, a description 440 of the create or update a case state 436 and its triggers, conditions and actions is received from the non-technical user. All the above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like.

For waiting for a response state 441, the non-technical user specifies a case response event type trigger 442, which confirms that a case response was received. Case response event type trigger 442 is caused by the satisfaction of condition 443 that evaluates whether the case response was successfully registered.

If condition 443 is met, action 444 is executed. Action 444 includes sub-actions 444 a, 444 b, 444 c and 444 d and causes state transition to 48 hours still bad state 425.

The example action 444 and its sub-action 444 a-d are represented by simple expressions respectively specified by the non-technical user as:

-   -   caseID=caseResponse.ID     -   lastSubject=subject     -   caseResponse=null     -   Change state to 48 Hours still Bad

In other implementations, a description 445 of the waiting for a response state 441 and its triggers, conditions and actions is received from the non-technical user. All the above mentioned specifications can be made using declarative or visual inputs such as simple expressions, drop-down menus, check-boxes, drag-drop features, and the like.

In other implementations, state machines and data entry columnar based on different use cases and operations can be implemented, some which are discussed infra as particular implementations.

In other implementations, state machines and data entry articulations based on different use cases and operations can be implemented. For example, a GUI display articulation could be devised with a diagrammatic approach such as that seen in FIG. 3, with a GUI for adding data such as that discussed supra for FIG. 4A-4C. Non-technical users could enter data via the state diagram display articulation.

The above implementations are only exemplary and can be similarly applied in another programming language, be it high-level programming language, low-level programming language, functional programming language, markup programming language or imperative programming language, as listed supra.

Flowcharts

FIG. 5 shows a server-side implementation of a flowchart 500 of simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow. Flowchart 500 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 5. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this workflow is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

At action 510, the method includes generating for display a data entry columnar that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity, as described supra. In some implementations, the data entry columnar includes at least one column for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions.

In one implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition. In another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states. In yet another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of multiple states of the entity.

At action 520, the method includes receiving declarative input to the data entry columnar that defines state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and by events that cause state transitions, as described supra. In some implementations, when the entity is an electronic device, the states of the electronic device further include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power and extent of network connectivity. In some implementations, when the entity is a user, the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed.

At action 530, the method includes receiving declarative input to the data entry columnar that specifies selected alternative actions to perform responsive to the state transitions, as described supra.

At action 540, the method includes saving the declarative input or a workflow constructed from the declarative input, as described supra.

In some implementations, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. In one implementation, the declarative inputs include at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data and social media streams. In another implementation, the message bus is at least one of Kafka, Flume, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. In yet another implementation, the stream processing system is at least one of Storm and Spark.

FIG. 6 depicts a client-side implementation of a representative method flowchart 600 of simplifying for a non-programming user creation of an entity management workflow. Flowchart 600 can be implemented at least partially with a computer or other data processing system, e.g., by one or more processors configured to receive or retrieve information, process the information, store results, and transmit the results. Other implementations may perform the actions in different orders and/or with different, fewer or additional actions than those illustrated in FIG. 6. Multiple actions can be combined in some implementations. For convenience, this workflow is described with reference to the system that carries out a method. The system is not necessarily part of the method.

At action 610, the method includes receiving a data entry columnar that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity, as described supra. In some implementations, the data entry columnar includes at least one column for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions.

In one implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition. In another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states. In yet another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of multiple states of the entity.

At action 620, the method includes transmitting data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar that define multiple states of the entity, state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and declarative inputs that cause state transitions upon event values satisfying a condition, at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition and at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states, as described supra.

In some implementations, when the entity is an electronic device, the states of the electronic device further include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power and extent of network connectivity. In some implementations, when the entity is a user, the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed.

The method further includes the condition being measured against at least one value of a database field that the condition incorporates and controlling alternative actions to implement responsive to the state transitions.

In some implementations, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. In one implementation, the declarative inputs include at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data and social media streams. In another implementation, the message bus is at least one of Kafka, Flume, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. In yet another implementation, the stream processing system is at least one of Storm and Spark.

Multi-Tenant Integration

FIG. 7 is a block diagram of an exemplary multi-tenant system 700 suitable for integration with in the IoT platform 100 of FIG. 1 in accordance with one or more implementation.

IoT platform 100 of FIG. 1 can be implemented using a multi-tenant system. In that regard, FIG. 7 presents a conceptual block diagram of an exemplary multi-tenant system suitable for integration with the IoT platform 100 of FIG. 1 in accordance with one or more implementations.

In general, the illustrated multi-tenant system 700 of FIG. 7 includes a server 702 that dynamically creates and supports virtual applications 728 based upon data 732 from a common database 730 that is shared between multiple tenants, alternatively referred to herein as a “multi-tenant database”. Data and services generated by the virtual applications 728A and 728B are provided via a network 745 to any number of client devices 740A or 740B, as desired. Virtual applications 728A and 728B are suitably generated at run-time (or on-demand) using application platform 710 that securely provides access to the data 732 in the database 730 for each of the various tenants subscribing to the multi-tenant system 700. In accordance with one non-limiting example, the multi-tenant system 700 is implemented in the form of an on-demand multi-tenant user relationship management (CRM) system that can support any number of authenticated users of multiple tenants.

As used herein, a “tenant” or an “organization” refers to a group of one or more users that shares access to common subset of the data within the multi-tenant database 730. In this regard, each tenant includes one or more users associated with, assigned to, or otherwise belonging to that respective tenant. Stated another way, each respective user within the multi-tenant system 700 is associated with, assigned to, or otherwise belongs to a particular tenant of the plurality of tenants supported by the multi-tenant system 700. Tenants may represent users, user departments, work or legal organizations, and/or any other entities that maintain data for particular sets of users within the multi-tenant system 700. Although multiple tenants may share access to the server 702 and the database 730, the particular data and services provided from the server 702 to each tenant can be securely isolated from those provided to other tenants. The multi-tenant architecture therefore allows different sets of users to share functionality and hardware resources without necessarily sharing any of the data 732 belonging to or otherwise associated with other tenants.

The multi-tenant database 730 is any sort of repository or other data storage system capable of storing and managing the data 732 associated with any number of tenants. The database 730 may be implemented using any type of conventional database server hardware. In various implementations, the database 730 shares processing hardware with the server 702. In other implementations, the database 730 is implemented using separate physical and/or virtual database server hardware that communicates with the server 702 to perform the various functions described herein. In an exemplary implementation, the database 730 includes a database management system or other equivalent software capable of determining an optimal query plan for retrieving and providing a particular subset of the data 732 to an instance of virtual application 728A or 728B in response to a query initiated or otherwise provided by a virtual application 728A or 728B. The multi-tenant database 730 may alternatively be referred to herein as an on-demand database, in that the multi-tenant database 730 provides (or is available to provide) data at run-time to on-demand virtual applications 728A or 728B generated by the application platform 710.

In practice, the data 732 may be organized and formatted in any manner to support the application platform 710. In various implementations, the data 732 is suitably organized into a relatively small number of large data tables to maintain a semi-amorphous “heap”-type format. The data 732 can then be organized as needed for a particular virtual application 728A or 728B. In various implementations, conventional data relationships are established using any number of pivot tables 734 that establish indexing, uniqueness, relationships between entities, and/or other aspects of conventional database organization as desired. Further data manipulation and report formatting is generally performed at run-time using a variety of metadata constructs. Metadata within a universal data directory (UDD) 736, for example, can be used to describe any number of forms, reports, workflows, user access privileges, work logic and other constructs that are common to multiple tenants. Tenant-specific formatting, functions and other constructs may be maintained as tenant-specific metadata 338 for each tenant, as desired. Rather than forcing the data 732 into an inflexible global structure that is common to all tenants and applications, the database 730 is organized to be relatively amorphous, with the pivot tables 734 and the metadata 738A and 738B providing additional structure on an as-needed basis. To that end, the application platform 710 suitably uses the pivot tables 734 and/or the metadata 738A-B to generate “virtual” components of the virtual applications 728A and 728B to logically obtain, process, and present the relatively amorphous data 732 from the database 730.

The server 702 is implemented using one or more actual and/or virtual computing systems that collectively provide the dynamic application platform 710 for generating the virtual applications 728. For example, the server 702 may be implemented using a cluster of actual and/or virtual servers operating in conjunction with each other, typically in association with conventional network communications, cluster management, load balancing and other features as appropriate. The server 702 operates with any sort of conventional processing hardware such as a processor 705, memory 706, input/output features 707 and the like. The input/output features 707 generally represent the interface(s) to networks (e.g., to the network 745, or any other local area, wide area or other network), mass storage, display devices, data entry devices and/or the like. The processor 705 may be implemented using any suitable processing system, such as one or more processors, controllers, microprocessors, microcontrollers, processing cores and/or other computing resources spread across any number of distributed or integrated systems, including any number of “cloud-based” or other virtual systems. The memory 706 represents any non-transitory short or long term storage or other computer-readable media capable of storing programming instructions for execution on the processor 705, including any sort of random access memory (RAM), read only memory (ROM), flash memory, magnetic or optical mass storage, and/or the like. The computer-executable programming instructions, when read and executed by the server 702 and/or processor 705, cause the server 702 and/or processor 705 to create, generate, or otherwise facilitate the application platform 710 and/or virtual applications 728A and 728B, and perform one or more additional tasks, operations, functions, and/or processes described herein. It should be noted that the memory 706 represents one suitable implementation of such computer-readable media, and alternatively or additionally, the server 702 could receive and cooperate with external computer-readable media that is realized as a portable or mobile component or application platform, e.g., a portable hard drive, a USB flash drive, an optical disc, or the like.

The application platform 710 is any sort of software application or other data processing engine that generates the virtual applications 728A and 728B that provide data and/or services to the client devices 740A and 740B. In a typical implementation, the application platform 710 gains access to processing resources, communications interfaces and other features of the processing hardware using any sort of conventional or proprietary operating system 708. The virtual applications 728A and 728B are typically generated at run-time in response to input received from the client devices 740A and 740B. For the illustrated implementation, the application platform 710 includes a bulk data processing engine 712, a query generator 714, a search engine 716 that provides text indexing and other search functionality, and a runtime application generator 720. Each of these features may be implemented as a separate process or other module, and many equivalent implementations could include different and/or additional features, components or other modules as desired.

The runtime application generator 720 dynamically builds and executes the virtual applications 728A and 728B in response to specific requests received from the client devices 740A and 740B. The virtual applications 728A and 728B are typically constructed in accordance with the tenant-specific metadata 738A and 738B, which describes the particular tables, reports, interfaces and/or other features of the particular application 728A or 728B. In various implementations, each virtual application 728A or 728B generates dynamic web content that can be served to a browser or other client programs 742A and 742B associated with its client device 740A or 740B, as appropriate.

The runtime application generator 720 suitably interacts with the query generator 714 to efficiently obtain multi-tenant data 732 from the database 730 as needed in response to input queries initiated or otherwise provided by users of the client devices 740A and 740B. In a typical implementation, the query generator 714 considers the identity of the user requesting a particular function (along with the user's associated tenant), and then builds and executes queries to the database 730 using system-wide metadata within a universal data directory (UDD) 736, tenant specific metadata 738A and 738B, pivot tables 734, and/or any other available resources. The query generator 714 in this example therefore maintains security of the common database 730 by ensuring that queries are consistent with access privileges granted to the user and/or tenant that initiated the request. In this manner, the query generator 714 suitably obtains requested subsets of data 732 accessible to a user and/or tenant from the database 730 as needed to populate the tables, reports or other features of the particular virtual application 728A or 728B for that user and/or tenant.

Still referring to FIG. 7, the data processing engine 712 performs bulk processing operations on the data 732 such as uploads or downloads, updates, online transaction processing, and/or the like. In many implementations, less urgent bulk processing of the data 732 can be scheduled to occur as processing resources become available, thereby giving priority to more urgent data processing by the query generator 714, the search engine 716, the virtual applications 728A and 728B, etc.

In exemplary implementations, the application platform 710 is utilized to create and/or generate data-driven virtual applications 728A and 728B for the tenants that they support. Such virtual applications 728A and 728B may make use of interface features such as custom (or tenant-specific) screens 724, standard (or universal) screens 722 or the like. Any number of custom and/or standard objects 726 may also be available for integration into tenant-developed virtual applications 728A and 728B. As used herein, “custom” should be understood as meaning that a respective object or application is tenant-specific (e.g., only available to users associated with a particular tenant in the multi-tenant system) or user-specific (e.g., only available to a particular subset of users within the multi-tenant system), whereas “standard” or “universal” applications or objects are available across multiple tenants in the multi-tenant system. The data 732 associated with each virtual application 728A or 728B is provided to the database 730, as appropriate, and stored until it is requested or is otherwise needed, along with the metadata 738A and 738B that describes the particular features (e.g., reports, tables, functions, objects, fields, formulas, code, etc.) of that particular virtual application 728A or 728B. For example, a virtual application 728A or 728B may include a number of objects 726 accessible to a tenant, wherein for each object 726 accessible to the tenant, information pertaining to its object type along with values for various fields associated with that respective object type are maintained as metadata 738A and 738B in the database 730. In this regard, the object type defines the structure (e.g., the formatting, functions and other constructs) of each respective object 726 and the various fields associated therewith.

With continued reference to FIG. 7, the data and services provided by the server 702 can be retrieved using any sort of personal computer, mobile telephone, tablet or other network-enabled client device 740A or 740B on the network 745. In an exemplary implementation, the client device 740A or 740B includes a display device, such as a monitor, screen, or another conventional electronic display capable of graphically presenting data and/or information retrieved from the multi-tenant database 730. Typically, the user operates a conventional browser application or other client program 742A or 742B executed by the client devices 740A and 740B to contact the server 702 via the network 745 using a networking protocol, such as the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) or the like. The user typically authenticates his or her identity to the server 702 to obtain a session identifier (“SessionID”) that identifies the user in subsequent communications with the server 702. When the identified user requests access to a virtual application 728A or 728B, the runtime application generator 720 suitably creates the application at run time based upon the metadata 738A and 738B, as appropriate. As noted above, the virtual application 728A or 728B may contain Java, ActiveX, or other content that can be presented using conventional client software running on the client device 740A or 740B; other implementations may simply provide dynamic web or other content that can be presented and viewed by the user, as desired.

The foregoing description is merely illustrative in nature and is not intended to limit the implementations of the subject matter or the application and uses of such implementations. Furthermore, there is no intention to be bound by any expressed or implied theory presented in the technical field, background, or the detailed description. As used herein, the word “exemplary” means “serving as an example, instance, or illustration.” Any implementation described herein as exemplary is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other implementations, and the exemplary implementations described herein are not intended to limit the scope or applicability of the subject matter in anyway.

For the sake of brevity, conventional techniques related to databases, social networks, user interfaces, and other functional aspects of the systems (and the individual operating components of the systems) may not be described in detail herein. In addition, those skilled in the art will appreciate that implementations may be practiced in conjunction with any number of system and/or network architectures, data transmission protocols, and device configurations, and that the system described herein is merely one suitable example. Furthermore, certain terminology may be used herein for the purpose of reference only, and thus is not intended to be limiting. For example, the terms “first”, “second” and other such numerical terms do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context.

Implementations of the subject matter may be described herein in terms of functional and/or logical block components, and with reference to symbolic representations of operations, processing tasks, and functions that may be performed by various computing components or devices. Such operations, tasks, and functions are sometimes referred to as being computer-executed, computerized, software-implemented, or computer-implemented. In practice, one or more processing systems or devices can carry out the described operations, tasks, and functions by manipulating electrical signals representing data bits at accessible memory locations, as well as other processing of signals. The memory locations where data bits are maintained are physical locations that have particular electrical, magnetic, optical, or organic properties corresponding to the data bits. It should be appreciated that the various block components shown in the figures may be realized by any number of hardware, software, and/or firmware components configured to perform the specified functions. For example, an implementation of a system or a component may employ various integrated circuit components, e.g., memory elements, digital signal processing elements, logic elements, look-up tables, or the like, which may carry out a variety of functions under the control of one or more microprocessors or other control devices. When implemented in software or firmware, various elements of the systems described herein are essentially the code segments or instructions that perform the various tasks. The program or code segments can be stored in a processor-readable medium or transmitted by a computer data signal embodied in a carrier wave over a transmission medium or communication path. The “processor-readable medium” or “machine-readable medium” may include any non-transitory medium that can store or transfer information. Examples of the processor-readable medium include an electronic circuit, a semiconductor memory device, a ROM, a flash memory, an erasable ROM (EROM), a floppy diskette, a CD-ROM, an optical disk, a hard disk, a fiber optic medium, a radio frequency (RF) link, or the like. The computer data signal may include any signal that can propagate over a transmission medium such as electronic network channels, optical fibers, air, electromagnetic paths, or RF links. The code segments may be downloaded via computer networks such as the Internet, an intranet, a LAN, or the like. In this regard, the subject matter described herein can be implemented in the context of any computer-implemented system and/or in connection with two or more separate and distinct computer-implemented systems that cooperate and communicate with one another. In one or more exemplary implementations, the subject matter described herein is implemented in conjunction with a virtual user relationship management (CRM) application in a multi-tenant environment.

Some Particular Implementations

Some particular implementations and features are described in the following discussion.

In one server-side implementation, described is a method of simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow. The method includes generating for display a data entry columnar that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. In some implementations, the data entry columnar includes at least one column for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers.

The method also includes receiving declarative input to the data entry columnar that defines state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and by events that cause state transitions.

The method further includes receiving declarative input to the data entry columnar that specifies selected alternative actions to perform responsive to the state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition trigger and event based transition triggers; and saving the declarative input or a workflow constructed from the declarative input.

The method further includes responsive to the conditions being satisfied, executing the alternative actions during the state transitions.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as terminology, introduction, IoT platform and stream-batch processing framework, state machine, data columnar, flowcharts, multi-tenant integration, some particular implementations, etc.

In one implementation, declarative inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers.

In another implementation, declarative inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states.

In yet another implementation, declarative inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of multiple states of the entity.

In some implementations, when the entity is an electronic device, the states of the electronic device further include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power and extent of network connectivity.

In some implementations, when the entity is a user, the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed.

In some implementations, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. In one implementation, the declarative inputs include at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data and social media streams. In another implementation, the message bus is at least one of Kafka, Flume, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. In some implementations, the stream processing system is at least one of Storm and Spark.

In one client-side implementation, a method is disclosed for simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow. The method includes receiving a data entry columnar that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. In some implementations, the data entry columnar includes at least one column for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions and alternative actions responsive to state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers.

The method also includes transmitting declarative input to the data entry columnar that defines multiple states of the entity, state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and declarative inputs that cause state transitions upon event values satisfying a condition, at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition and at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states.

The method of the disclosed client-side implementation further includes the condition controlling alternative actions to implement responsive to the state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers. In some implementations, when the entity is an electronic device, the states of the electronic device further include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power and extent of network connectivity.

In some implementations, when the entity is a user, the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed.

In some implementations, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. In one implementation, the declarative inputs include at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data and social media streams. In one implementation, the method further includes measuring a condition during a state transition against at least one value of a database field that the condition references.

The method described in this section and other sections of the technology disclosed can include one or more of the following features and/or features described in connection with additional methods disclosed. In the interest of conciseness, the combinations of features disclosed in this application are not individually enumerated and are not repeated with each base set of features. The reader will understand how features identified in this method can readily be combined with sets of base features identified as implementations such as terminology, introduction, IoT platform and stream-batch processing framework, state machine, data columnar, flowcharts, multi-tenant integration, some particular implementations, etc.

In one implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transition.

In another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states.

In yet another implementation, data indicating inputs to the data entry columnar further include specification of multiple states of the entity.

In some implementations, when the entity is an electronic device, the states of the electronic device further include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power and extent of network connectivity.

In some implementations, when the entity is a user, the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed. In some implementations of this disclosed method, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. In one implementation, the declarative inputs include at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data and social media streams. In another implementation, the message bus is at least one of Kafka, Flume, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ. In yet another implementation, the stream processing system is at least one of Storm and Spark.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

In one implementation, a method of simplifying, for a non-programming user, creation of an entity management workflow includes generating for display a data entry articulation that accepts declarative input which specifies a state machine implementing an automated multi-step progression of interaction with an entity. Examples of a data entry articulation can include a columnar, a spreadsheet, predefined UI components in a markup language such as JSON, or a state diagram representation. For the disclosed method, the data entry articulation includes at least one container for states in the multi-step progression, time based transition triggers, event based transition triggers, definitions of conditions; and alternative actions responsive to state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers. The method also includes receiving declarative input to the data entry articulation that defines state transition triggers which are alternatively specified by timers that cause state transitions upon expiration of a time period and by events that cause state transitions; and receiving declarative input to the data entry articulation that specifies selected alternative actions to perform responsive to the state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers. The disclosed method further includes saving the declarative input or a workflow constructed from the declarative input.

In some implementations the method further includes declarative input to the data entry articulation that includes specification of at least one resulting state following execution of an action responsive to a state transitions caused by at least one of time based transition triggers and event based transition triggers. The method can also include declarative input to the data entry articulation that includes specification of at least one always action responsive to a global state transition that applies to all states. The disclosed method further includes declarative input to the data entry articulation that includes specification of multiple states of the entity. In some implementations of the method, the entity is a user, and the states of the user further include at least one of avid, churned and lapsed. For some disclosed implementations of the method, the declarative inputs are received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system.

Other implementations of the method described in this section can include a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing computer program instructions executable by a processor to perform any of the methods described above. Yet another implementation of the method described in this section can include a system including memory and one or more processors operable to execute computer program instructions, stored in the memory, to perform any of the methods described above.

The terms and expressions employed herein are used as terms and expressions of description and not of limitation, and there is no intention, in the use of such terms and expressions, of excluding any equivalents of the features shown and described or portions thereof. In addition, having described certain implementations of the technology disclosed, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that other implementations incorporating the concepts disclosed herein can be used without departing from the spirit and scope of the technology disclosed. Accordingly, the described implementations are to be considered in all respects as only illustrative and not restrictive. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for automatically responding to changes in a state of a device, the method including: generating a data entry interface editor that accepts input, wherein the input corresponds to a device and corresponds to a rule for triggering an action; receiving a first input to the data entry interface editor that defines at least one of a time-based rule or an event-based rule, wherein the time-based rule is configured to cause an action when the time-based rule persists as true for a specified amount of time and the event-based rule is configured to cause an action when the event-based rule evaluates as true; receiving a second input that specifies an action to perform responsive to the at least one of the time-based rule or the event-based rule; and saving at least the first input or the second input.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a third input to the data entry interface editor that specifies a resulting state of the device following execution of the action.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the action caused by the time-based rule is a first action and comprises a single state transition, and further comprising receiving a third input to the data entry interface editor that specifies a second action responsive to a global state transition that applies to a plurality of states of the device.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a third input to the data entry interface editor that specifies a plurality of states of the device.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the device is an electronic device, and the plurality of states of the electronic device include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power, or extent of network connectivity.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the electronic device comprises a sensor, smart phone, smart watch, laptop, tablet, telephone, server, camera, scanner, printer, near-field communication device, vehicle, or biomedical equipment.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first input or the second input is received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the first input or the second input includes at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data, or social media streams.
 9. The method of claim 7, wherein the message bus is at least one of Kafka, Flume, ActiveMQ, or RabbitMQ, and the stream processing system is at least one of Storm or Spark.
 10. The method of claim 7, wherein the event-based rule evaluates as true when an event satisfies a condition, the action is a first action, and further including: measuring the condition during a state transition against at least one value of a database field that the condition references; and performing a second action based on the measuring.
 11. A system including one or more processors coupled to memory, the memory loaded with computer program instructions for automatically responding to changes in a state of a device, the computer program instructions, when executed on the one or more processors, implementing actions comprising: generating a data entry interface editor that accepts input, wherein the input corresponds to a device and corresponds to a rule for triggering an action; receiving a first input to the data entry interface editor that defines at least one of a time-based rule or an event-based rule, wherein the time-based rule is configured to cause an action when the time-based rule persists as true for a specified amount of time and the event-based rule is configured to cause an action when the event-based rule evaluates as true; receiving a second input that specifies an action to perform responsive to the at least one of the time-based rule or the event-based rule; and saving at least the first input or the second input.
 12. A non-transitory computer readable storage medium impressed with computer program instructions for automatically responding to changes in a state of a device, the instructions, when executed on a processor, implement actions comprising: generating a data entry interface editor that accepts input, wherein the input corresponds to a device and corresponds to a rule for triggering an action; receiving a first input to the data entry interface editor that defines at least one of a time-based rule or an event-based rule, wherein the time-based rule is configured to cause an action when the time-based rule persists as true for a specified amount of time and the event-based rule is configured to cause an action when the event-based rule evaluates as true; receiving a second input that specifies an action to perform responsive to the at least one of the time-based rule or the event-based rule; and saving at least the first input or the second input.
 13. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 12, wherein at least one of the first input or the second input is received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system.
 14. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium of claim 13, wherein the first input or the second input includes at least one of user click data, user purchasing behavior, device data, or social media streams.
 15. A method for automatically responding to changes in a state of a device, the method including: receiving a data entry interface editor that accepts input, wherein the input corresponds to a device and corresponds to a rule for triggering an action; and transmitting an input value to the data entry interface editor that defines: a plurality of states of the device; at least one of the time-based rule or an event-based rule, wherein the time-based rule is configured to cause an action when the time-based rule persists as true for a specified amount of time and the event-based rule is configured to cause an action when the event-based rule evaluates as true; a resulting state following execution of a first action responsive to at least one of the time-based rule or the event-based rule; and a second action responsive to a state transition that applies to the plurality of states of the device.
 16. The method of claim 15, wherein the device is an electronic device, and the plurality of states of the electronic device include at least one of on, off, standby, power up, power down, a percentage of full power, or extent of network connectivity.
 17. The method of claim 16, wherein the electronic device comprises a sensor, smart phone, smart watch, laptop, tablet, telephone, server, camera, scanner, printer, near-field communication device, vehicle, or biomedical equipment.
 18. The method of claim 15, wherein the input is received from a near real-time (NRT) event management framework that includes a message bus and a stream processing system. 